


Mapping Our Boundaries

by deathwailart



Series: Red Hoods [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Prequel, Sexual Content, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:04:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Prequel to Destination Unknown; Ambrose's past.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Mapping Our Boundaries

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to Destination Unknown; Ambrose's past.

He is ten. Ten and small for his age, skinny, pared down to skin and bone without much in the way of muscle or even the promise of muscle to come. The city he arrives in his huge and cold and the accent hard and coarse to his ears. Men and women tut and curse at him when he can’t get out of their way quick enough. He wonders what possessed him to run away in the first place but then he remembers the events of the previous months, his parents pulling that woman in her Red Hood apart and he knew then that he couldn’t belong.

Ambrose might only be ten and he might be short and scrawny for his age and he is very much a wolf when he chooses to be or when the full moon beckons but he knows this for certain: he is not an animal.

He shoulders his bag, heavy with his wolf skin that he couldn’t bear to be parted from, and hurries out of the station before anyone can catch him. He didn’t have enough money for his last train ticket, not if he wanted to eat, so he had to hide from the ticket inspector until he heard the voice announcing, “This station is Glasgow Queen Street, please mind the gap when alighting from this train.” He’d managed to scurry past the ticket barriers and out of the station and around a corner, away from the taxis. Now he’s in Glasgow, a city he doesn’t know beyond what little telly he’s seen but he knows that Glasgow is full of hard nuts and alcoholics and drug addicts and violent Glaswegians and football thugs. He sniffles, unwilling to cry. But he’s scared out of his wits. Even though he ran away, he still wants his mum to cuddle him and his dad to teach him football and the promise of a warm meal and a bath and a comfortable bed.

He doesn’t know where he’ll sleep tonight.

Or what his next meal will be.

He heads along with a crowd, almost falling more than once when his eyes sting and blur with tears that are threatening. But he’s not going to cry here. He’s a big boy. Big enough to make a choice and run away. So he hurries along and crosses the street and there’s a bakers so he hurries in and buys a sausage roll because it smells so good and it makes his mouth water and his stomach growl like a wild animal. Which isn’t the best of comparisons because he wants to forget about what he is. But he buys it and he buys the strange can of juice Irn Bru and heads over to the square across from the bakers and takes a seat on the bench. The first bite of the sausage roll is bliss and he savours it, eyes closed, kicking his legs back and forth until he realises that he’s startling the pigeons. So he stops and sits still, looking around at all the people going about their lives, wondering if any of them are like them or like the girl.

Because Ambrose and his family are different. It’s why he has a wolf skin in his bag. It’s why women in red hoods hunt them with silver knives and bullets. It’s why his parents ripped a woman limb from limb even as she screamed and cried and pleaded. And Ambrose watched them, wearing his wolf skin but still in his human body and saw the blood painting the muzzles of his parents who gave him a look, a look that said _this is your life, this is who you are, who you will grow up to be_. And Ambrose ran that night. He ran in his jeans, leaving the t-shirt behind and with his wolf skin slung about his shoulders and sobbed and choked and fell, cutting up his hands and knees and chin because he didn’t want to be like that. He didn’t want to kill someone. Because killing people was bad and he thought that his mum and dad were good people. He knows it’s more complicated because there are lots of grown up things but two wrongs don’t make a right. And that woman hadn’t even seen them, didn’t even have a weapon in her hand and his parents ripped her to shreds and left her there, alone, in the woods, in the cold and in the dark.

When his parents got home he was curled up under the covers, hot and sweaty, his bottom lip bleeding from biting it, face itchy from tears and covered in cuts and scrapes and bruises from running. He lied and said he was frightened, that he didn’t know what to do and his parents cuddled him, got him ready for bed and stayed in the house. He felt sick when they were close; they smelled of blood and it made him feel sick.

He knows that he can’t help being what he is, that he was born that way and that there isn’t a cure, despite what the Red Hoods say but it doesn’t mean that he wants to be like this. He doesn’t like having to spend nights in the woods. He hates having to eat raw animal. He hates that when he’s older, his parents want to live wild all the time, the way they should. He wants to be a person who goes to school, has a job, marries someone. He doesn’t want to live like some wild beast because then they’re no better than the stories the Red Hoods carry.

His sausage roll is gone and he shakes out the crumbs for the pigeons, crumpling the paper bag and sticking it in his pocket for now before he starts on the can of juice. It doesn’t taste like anything he’s had before and it’s almost too sweet even for a ten year old boy who loves things that will rot his teeth but he doesn’t want to look out of place. He wants to blend into this city and hide, even just for a little while and hope that no one finds him. He wonders, then, if his parents miss him. If they’re looking for him. If they’ve passed on the word to other packs. What happens if a Red Hood finds him? His parents told him not to tell anyone what he really was because no one would believe him beyond a Red Hood or someone closely tied to them and because normal people didn’t believe things like that. But he doesn’t know if they can tell from looking at him. What if they have a sixth sense and see him? He doesn’t want to die. He just doesn’t want to be what he is, not right now. He’ll avoid anyone in red if he can. That might be safer.

A blast of wind hits him, cutting right through him and the pigeons fly off with a collective flap that rings out like a gunshot. It makes him jump because he’s heard guns before and because the Red Hoods have them. He should probably get up and find somewhere he can sleep for the night. A doorway, like the Victorian orphans did. In some ways, he’s an orphan by choice and by circumstance. But for now he stays on the bench, tired and cold and lonely. He’s lucky that it hasn’t started to rain yet. He has no watch on so he can’t tell the time but it must be getting late because the sky is darkening and the traffic picks up, rush hour traffic, everyone going home. Dad would be heading home too from the job he hates, the one he can’t wait to leave when Ambrose is a bigger and they can live the wild life he’s always wanted to.

“I hate pretending to be civilised,” is what he always says and Ambrose’s mum hits him. She grew up the way Ambrose did and wanted her child to have safe years for the early ones. He’s not supposed to know but his dad grew up wild when he was young until one brother died from exposure, another killed by a Red Hood and his mother died after having his baby sister, picking up an infection. That’s when Ambrose’s grandfather moved them into a little cottage and became a farmer. Ambrose’s aunt isn’t right because she was born before she was ready and because she didn’t get good care. She’s a child, a child younger than Ambrose, in a grown woman’s body. He likes her though. She’s quiet and gentle and she likes to read books with him.

A shiver racks his skinny little body, and he leans against the arm of the bench, head lolling to one side. Just a couple of minutes of sleep. Just a couple and he’ll get up and go find somewhere warm and pull on the wolf skin. Right now he’s small and skinny, maybe he can run around like an urban fox and people will take pity on him because there are nice people out there who obviously read or saw The Animals of Farthing Wood like he did. Maybe he can be friends with foxes. He wonders if there are any of them like Fox and Vixen. He thinks they’d make better parents than wolves at any rate...

\---

“You can’t sleep here son,” the policeman says, crouching down and Ambrose tries to speak but nothing comes out, his teeth chattering and he’s shivering violently, uncontrollably. “Oh Christ boy, how long have you been out here, eh?” Ambrose shakes from head to foot and he’s very tired too, cold and tired and hungry again. If he tries hard enough he can fall asleep here, he is sure of it.

The policeman shakes him and the whine Ambrose makes is that of a kicked dog.

“Dispatch I need an ambulance for George Square, we have a young male, possibly with hypothermia. Make it quick, he’s only a wee thing.” The radio crackles static and then Ambrose is being lifted and there’s the rustle of fabric and the policeman is wrapping his jacket around him. “Stay with me son, won’t be long.”

Ambrose tries, he really tries because you have to do what policemen say but he’s so cold and tired and he misses his bed with the spaceship duvet cover and pillowcases.

He wakes, briefly, in the ambulance when they’re poking and prodding at him, the siren wailing. His head hurts and he’s in agony from the beginning stabs of pins and needles up and down the length of his body.

He closes his eyes again.

  
\---

He wakes up in a bed and panics for a minute until he hears beeps and coughing and lots of noise and opens his eyes. He has a needle in one arm, connected to a bag and a strange thing on the index finger of his other hand. The policeman is asleep in the chair next to the bed and Ambrose wonders if he’s in big trouble, if they’ll send him home and he doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to go back and face his mum and dad. They’ll be so angry with him and they’ll hit him and shout at him and he’ll have to go back to being a wolf.

Next to him the policeman wakes up and Ambrose sees that his badge says Dave Thompson and when he notices that Ambrose is awake he smiles, the first smile Ambrose has seen in days and calls for a doctor.

“How are you feeling?” Dave asks and Ambrose coughs when he tries to speak, throat dry and itchy.  
  
“Better,” he eventually chokes out and Dave smiles and ruffles Ambrose’s hair.  
  
“My name is Dave Thompson, I’m a policeman. Can you tell me your name?”  
  
“Ambrose.”  
  
“And your last name?”  
  
“Peters.”  
  
“Do you know your phone number? We need to get in touch with your family.”  
  
Ambrose grabs the arm of the man and gazes at him imploringly. “Don’t make me go home.”

Before Dave can ask questions, a doctor appears and ushers him out and does all sorts of tests and Ambrose jumps when the stethoscope touches his skin because it’s like an ice cube. The doctor apologises and laughs and blows on it to warm it up.

“You should have stethoscope warmers,” Ambrose says.  
  
“You mean like hand warmers?”  
  
“Yes, but for stethoscopes.”  
  
“Maybe you should invent one then.” The doctor ruffles Ambrose’s hair and makes notes on a clipboard before announcing that Ambrose is doing well but that he’ll be staying for a few days. Ambrose nods and when the doctor asks if Ambrose has any questions he asks where his bag is (because if he loses his skin...well he doesn’t know but his parents said to always keep it safe with the same look they had when they said Red Hoods would kill him as soon as look at him) and if he can go to the loo. Because he’s cross-legged now. “Your bag is in your locker and of course you can. I’ll take you and we’ll just be careful with your drip.”

That’s when Ambrose learns how embarrassing it is to have someone help to hold you up while you go for a wee.

Back in bed, the doctor takes Dave away for a few minutes but tells a nurse to keep an eye on Ambrose and she smiles and nods before sitting on his bed and stroking his cheek.

“I know what you are.”  
  
“Wh-what do you mean?”  
  
“I was told to put your bag away and to check through it for any identification. And I saw the skin.”  Ambrose shakes his head and tries to pull away, feeling the tears start but she gathers him close, mindful of the needle in his arm and pets his hair as he sobs into her shoulder. “Ssssh, sssh, it’s going to be okay.”  
  
“H-h-ho-ow c-c-can you s-say that?” He stutters, hiccupping and his stomach hurts when he cries, probably because it’s empty again.  
  
“Because I’m one. Because my family are. Trust me, it’ll be okay, you’re not the first runaway we’ve heard of. My mum and dad...they’re not the people who had me.”  
  
“Did you r-run away?”  
  
She nods and smiles sadly. “I’m still a wolf but...I was taken in by a couple, other wolves. But they’re very human. They’re a foster family. Don’t worry honey-pie, it’ll all be fine.”

“Nurse,” the doctor and Dave the policeman return, “is everything alright?”  
  
“Sorry doctor, he’s just a little overwhelmed and needed a cuddle.”  
  
“I’m not surprised.” The doctor and policeman both look very grave and the nurse slips off before Ambrose can ask for her name. The doctor draws up a chair and sits next to the policeman at the bedside and sighs, looking at his notes before back up at Ambrose. “Ambrose...the officer said that you told him that you don’t want to go back home. Can you tell me why that is?”  
  
Ambrose feels the tears coming on again and hugs his knees to his chest, unable to look at either of them.  
  
“They can’t hurt you here,” Dave offers gently in a voice that doesn’t sound as though it’s used to talking so softly.  
  
“But they might find me. And I can’t go home. Because...because...” He can’t make himself say the words and drops his head to his knees and says nothing more. Both of the men sigh and say something about bringing in a social worker to help deal with this and how it’s so common before they take their leave, both promising to return very soon before the curtain is drawn shut, leaving Ambrose alone.

He hopes they don’t send him home or phone his parents.

He isn’t sure how long it is before the curtain is pulled open again and the same nurse appears – Kirsty – with a tray with a bowl of cereal, a plastic cup of orange juice and a banana.

“Any allergies we should know of?” Ambrose shakes his head as his stomach makes an embarrassing noise, wiping his runny nose on the sheets. “Good stuff.” Kirsty smiles and it’s a very nice smile and even though he’s only known her five minutes, she seems the smiley sort and she’s like him. Ambrose grew up loved but serious. He’s never smiled very much. But here she is, grown up after running away and smiling and with a job and she’s like him. “Don’t eat too fast or you’ll be sick.”  
  
“I won’t!” He tucks in to the cereal – Frosties, his favourite – before it can get soggy and Kirsty laughs a little.  
  
“I need you to do something for me,” she says quietly after a few minutes where he eats and he looks up, wiping away the milk that dribbles down his chin. “Doctor MacPherson and the police,” Kirsty says police funny: _polis_ , long ‘o’, short ‘i’, “they think you ran away because your mum and dad hit you. They think they abused you.”  
  
“But they didn’t.”  
  
“You were all covered in cuts and bruises, you’re a wee boy on his own up here and you don’t want to go home.”  
  
“But they didn’t hit me.” His mum and dad loved him, kept him safe. They would never purposefully hurt him.  
  
“I’ll take your word for that but let the police believe it. That way...that way they won’t send you home. And then you can get fostered and you won’t need to worry about your furry little problem.”

Ambrose doesn’t want to lie, not to the police and to doctors and to whatever a social worker is. He doesn’t want to get his mum and dad in trouble either. But equally, he doesn’t want to go home again or have his mum and dad appear.

He swallows hard, nods and says okay. Kirsty lets out a relieved breath and peels his banana for him and tells him that everything is going to be okay.

\---

The next years of his life aren’t just ‘okay’. They are _more_ than okay. Kirsty’s foster parents adopt him and he grows up in a sprawling house in Newton Mearns, sharing a room with another boy, Peter, which is mostly fun because this boy is older and treats Ambrose as though he’s _always_ been the little brother. He and Ambrose make forts and play football and seldom fight until all of a sudden Peter is grown up and doesn’t want to play much anymore but still, he looks after Ambrose and helps him with his homework and when Ambrose goes to the ‘big school’ he looks after him.

Ambrose cries when Peter eventually leaves home even though he’s sixteen by that point and far more confident than he ever could have imagined being as a ten year old. He doesn’t even really think about his parents anymore, Molly and Greg now his parental figures and he loves them, loves that they take in people like Ambrose even when it’s so dangerous. Even a young wolf can cause a lot of damage. And of course there’s the unspoken threat of the Red Hoods. But here, in this house, there haven’t been any threats. None of them are stupid enough to say what they are and because they’re in a house, in a relaxed environment, no one really misses school at the new moon because they take care of each other and they’re like a pack but it’s different. They’re having _fun_. There are spacious grounds at the house for them to run in and even though Ambrose still doesn’t enjoy changing, it’s more bearable. If he doesn’t want to go outside he can stay in his room (complete with a new brother, Lee, full of skittish nervous energy) and sleep until he feels his limbs stretch and relax and usually he sleeps with his wolf skin wrapped around him until he’s too hot and changes back into his normal clothes. These days he can pick himself up and move on and he has plans. Big plans. He loves reading now and devours any book that comes his way, even though most people seem to think that reading is a ‘girl’ thing. Lee’s parents kept him mostly feral as a small child and he’s not a good reader so Ambrose sits with him, holds books for children younger than Lee and reads aloud, moves his finger along the page and slowly, Lee makes progress.

It’s what helps Ambrose to make his decision about what he wants to do with his life because he gets excited when Lee runs to him with a book in hand or asks Ambrose to help him find something. So Ambrose digs in, works hard and manages to get into university studying Library and Information Studies and leaving home might hurt, a real physical ache in his heart, he’s excited about it.

University is stressful though, it was always going to be stressful but this is stupendously stressful, trying to hide his ‘condition’ from those around him although he’s sure that there are wolves around here. But it’s equally likely that there are Red Hoods too so he keeps his mouth shut and works hard and along the way there are girls that he meets and that’s when he discovers that he likes take charge girls. He didn’t meet too many girls at school beyond the obligatory girlfriend that just seemed to happen when you were on the football team like he was. But they were both young and he instigated mostly everything and made most of the calls about what they would do, where they would go in exchange for giving her gifts and going to dances or parties or whatever else with her. But he prefers that the girl takes the lead and he doesn’t think about it much, only on the late nights when his head is swimming from studying for too long on too little sleep. There’s one girl, Imogen, that he stays with until he chooses to graduate at the end of his third year and she’s incredible, studying maths and she can think circles around him. Imogen is incredible and he can honestly say that he probably loves her although Imogen is very cynical of love and Ambrose, who at times can admit that he’s a bit of a hopeless romantic, but Ambrose thinks that he loves her.

He agrees though that the stress of her final year and him job hunting would make it difficult for them to stay together so they end things when he graduates and Molly and Greg take photos of them together outside the university, him in his robes and Imogen in a smart skirt suit. Ambrose keeps the photograph and never forgets Imogen.

After university though, he doesn’t go back to Molly and Greg; he’s too old for a start but there’s something else. He misses them but not as acutely as he once did in the beginning. There has been a shift though, something he can’t ask Molly or Greg out of fear of offending them, a pull for England and for the family he ran away from. Maybe it’s a biological urge but as much as he loves Molly and Greg but he shared their love with a bunch of other children and because to him, they’re still too much like wolves. University, his life there and with friends and Imogen have made him realise that he really doesn’t want to be like this, not now. He wants to be normal but he can’t. With Molly and Greg, being what they are is normal. There isn’t anything else. They’re wolves but they’re civilised. And Ambrose, he desperately wants to be one thing or the other and he doesn’t want to be a wolf, to be hunted and chased and have to look over his shoulder and tell lie upon lie for the whole of his life. Maybe one day when he’s older he’ll want to be a wolf but he can’t see that day coming, not for a long time. For now he wants to pretend for as long as possible that he’s just Ambrose who was on his secondary school and university football teams as a goal keeper, who likes to read romance novels, strong women and who really does dress like a librarian.

Ambrose phones Molly and Greg when he moves into a flat in Glasgow out of a sense of duty and because it’s the right thing to do and there’s a distance between them now that Ambrose never even noticed but Molly and Greg don’t seem overly surprised by it. Ambrose isn’t either because he knows how wolves – real wolves, the wild animals, behave and Ambrose and those like him are no exception – behave and Ambrose is a young male. Young males disperse and go their own way and it makes Ambrose hates what he is a little bit more. He wants what Kirsty had, Kirsty who was older then than Ambrose is now but that’s a biology thing and even though those from Molly and Greg’s house have their human instincts first, some things will always go deeper.

It turns out to be the last time Ambrose ever talks to Molly and Greg.

It takes a good seven months but he finally gets a job with Strathclyde University, working in their library and he loves the job because it’s great with plenty of opportunities and should he chose to look for work elsewhere, he’s sure their reference would look great on any resume. But he’s getting away from himself. He works in the library during the day mostly and the students always seem sort of amazed to see someone his age – someone _their_ age – working there and helping them out but apart from a couple who try to push their luck, it’s all going well for him until one morning, over the cover of his latest trashy romance novel, borrowed from his boss Yvonne who has the wickedest and dirtiest laugh Ambrose has ever heard and it’s all the more shocking considering how prim and perfect she is in her skirt suits and pearls with not a hair out of place, when in walks a lovely redhead who huffs out a sigh as she stands at the counter.

“Can I help you?” He sets his book down and sits up properly, watching the little sneer she makes when she catches a look at the blurb.  
  
“Yeah, do you have a copy of this book?” She slides over a scrap of paper with impeccably neat handwriting, tucking her hair behind her ear.  
  
“I’ll just check,” he pushes his chair back from the counter and over to the computer behind him, typing away before pushing back over to the desk. “You’re in luck; we’ve got one copy in. Come on and we’ll go grab it.”

She smiles at him and it lights up her whole face and it makes Ambrose smile in return, the first smile he’s cracked this dreary Monday morning as he leads the way up to the history section, navigating through the shelves until he reaches the right one, pulling out the copy of the book with a flourish.

“God you’re a lifesaver,” the girl says with another grin, tucking the book under her arm. “Am I allowed to take this book out or is it one of the ones where I’ll need to stay here to work with it?”  
  
“We’ll need to go back downstairs to find out,” Ambrose replies apologetically because it’s a fair trek from the front desk up to this section and back again but the girl just shrugs and indicates for him to lead the way. Once back at the desk a student card is slid over and Ambrose finally finds out her name – Robin. “Well Robin, because this is the last copy you’ll need to stay here to work with it but there should be another copy coming in before the weekend if you want to take it home then.”  
  
“I’ll just keep working here then, the study rooms free?”  
  
“That one,” he gets to his feet again and indicates the room next to the photocopier.  
  
“Great, thanks again!” Book under her arm, Robin runs off and into the room and Ambrose goes back to his novel, relaxing because Mondays are generally quiet days. This Monday is in fact so quiet that he’s not interrupted again until he’s reminded that it’s time for lunch where he puts the book away so he can get back to doing some filing in the afternoon because they’re getting a delivery tomorrow and he has to clear space at some stage as well.

It isn’t until it’s getting to closing time when he remembers about Robin and goes to check that she’s still there because students (and Ambrose did this himself more than once) sometimes sneak out with a book that they shouldn’t when the staff have their backs turned. But Robin is just where he left her and he wonders if she’s stopped working at all because he never noticed her leaving once although he didn’t always have a clear view of the room.

“Hey,” he swings around the half open door, knocking gently three times although it still makes her jump, “we’re closing up now.”  
  
“God, what time is it?”  
  
“It’s after five.”  
  
Robin checks her watch, eyebrows raised in disbelief and swears quietly to herself as she gathers up notebooks and pens into her bag. “Shit, I completely lost track of the time.”  
  
“Well at least you used it wisely.” He waits in the doorway until she brushes past him, bag over her shoulder and book in hand.  
  
“Where should I leave this?”  
  
“On the front desk, will you need it tomorrow?”  
  
“Nope, I wrote out what I needed and photocopied a few pages so I should be fine.” She deposits the book on the desk and slips the now free hand into her hoodie pocket. “I think this is the latest I’ve ever stayed at university on a day where I didn’t have classes.”  
  
“You should see it much later at night if we have to finish off whatever we’re doing,” he replies as he opens the library doors for her, waving goodbye to Yvonne who’ll be closing up tonight. “It’s well spooky then.”

Robin laughs but shivers once they’re out into the brisk Glasgow night air, hugging her arms tight around herself. “Thanks for your help today, I need to get to the station, see if I’ll catch the train.”  
  
“Where you heading to?”  
  
“Helensburgh Central.”  
  
“We’ll be on the same one then; I live in Anniesland.”  
  
“So,” Robin finally says after a couple of minutes of walking in awkward silence, “what’s your name. Because I didn’t actually read your name badge.”  
  
“Ambrose Acker. And you’re Robin...?”  
  
“Robin Flanagan.”  
  
“What are you studying?”  
  
“Just general history for now. I want to do a doctorate in folklore at some point.”  
  
“Ambitious,” Ambrose whistles through his teeth after he speaks and Robin flashes a grin at him.  
  
“I’m such a geek about folklore and mythology. And fairytales and how they came to be although now everyone seems to interpret them to be sexual these days.”  
  
“That’s the way the world is, everything’s sexualised to the point that you’d think people would be immune to it.”  
  
Robin nods and then gives him a nudge. “And you, how did you manage to be a librarian?”  
  
“Library and Information Studies.”  
  
“Sounds scintillating.”  
  
“Hush you, ideally once I’ve paid off all my students loans and all that business I’ll go be a librarian in some small town and help children pick out books instead of feeling second-hand stress from all the students that traipse in and out and leave everything to the last minute.”  
  
“Yeah, because you really looked stressed this morning with your trashy romance novel.”  
  
“Look, even the most cynical person can enjoy some mushy escapism now and again.”  
  
“Right.”

They both hold their serious faces for perhaps five seconds before they’re laughing all the way into the station and to the cold, hard yellow seats, packed in with commuters on their way home for the day, Robin idly swinging out a foot at the pigeons that come to close to them. They sit at opposite sides of the table on the train, Robin telling him about Helensburgh and about how the best word to describe it is ‘shite’ and that the neds there are practically feral. Ambrose is reluctant to leave the train when it’s his stop and he stands at the platform and waves until the train shoots past him.

He walks to his dingy little flat with a lightness in his step that he didn’t know he was missing until now and hopes that he’ll see Robin again soon.

\---

He does see Robin again. In fact, he sees her rather a lot. On the days she has classes (and she always comes in on a Monday even though she doesn’t need to because she can take advantage of the quiet to get work done) she’s usually in the library or walking past the library on her way to the station and after about two months of this, she takes his hand and pulls him around the corner of the university building and pushes him up against the wall and kisses him, one hand on his cheek and the other on his hip. And then she asks him out and he says yes and they walk to the station hand in hand and when it’s his stop she leans across the table to kiss him again.

Ambrose is pretty damn sure that if his footsteps get any lighter he’ll be walking on air and at that point he thinks that, perhaps, Robin might have a point about romance novels rotting his brain.

\---

When the winter holidays hit, Robin invites him to Helensburgh to watch the lights being switched on, calling it the biggest non-event of the year even though there’s a DJ from the local radio station playing songs and a ceilidh nearby. They end up going to the ceilidh – some things were impossible to forget like the Christmas PE lessons where Scottish Country Dancing was taught in the run up to the Christmas dances – and navigating their way around small children and older couples, Robin’s cheeks bright and rosy as they dance round in a circle for part of the Dashing White Sergeant, red hair flying all directions. They don’t spend too much time dancing because it’s crowded and he’s starting to get a headache so they escape and grab cups of mulled wine. He feels like a normal everyday boyfriend when he sips his drink, Robin’s arm around his waist, visiting his girlfriend’s hometown with her.

Only he’s not and when he looks up to the sky to see the waxing moon he knows it. Knows that he’ll be spending his weekend in the woods frozen and miserable and then he’ll probably be in bed for a week with the cold.

Robin’s hand leaves his waist and reaches up to rub the back of his neck, thumb rubbing little circles just beneath his hairline and he takes a long drink to hide the frown that’s twisting up his face. He doesn’t particularly enjoy lying even though it’s necessary because of what he is but he always feels worse when he has a girlfriend in his life because those lies are different. The lies he has to tell then underscore everything and the more of them he tells, the more he sees the mistrust building and it’s usually only a matter of time before he breaks things off because it isn’t right. People can live with little lies but not something like that.

“Hey,” Robin’s fingers scratch ever so slightly across his neck and he shivers, breaking out into goose bumps, “wanna head up to the house? Mum and dad and my aunt are all away visiting relatives and I’ve got the place to myself.”  
  
“Oh do you now?” He takes her cup from her and tosses it in the nearest bin along with his as she starts to lead him away from the square and to the main street.  
  
“Yes I do,” she gives him a wicked smile as they turn the corner and start to head up towards the top of the town where she lives. “I never normally get a guaranteed night with no one else in.”  
  
“So that’s why you’re always at my flat then?” He teases, already getting out of breath because bloody hell, this road is steep. Robin isn’t batting an eyelid and he wonders where she gets her energy and stamina from because unless the weather is atrocious, she says she walks up from the train station to her house every morning.  
  
“Sadly yes. Even if your flat is probably a breeding ground for germs of all descriptions.”  
  
“Look, the dishes needed to soak.”  
  
“They’d gone mouldy.”

Ambrose makes a face at her but he knows why those dishes had gone mouldy; he hadn’t had enough time to clear up before packing off for the weekend and when he’d arrived back he’d been to exhausted and lethargic for days to actually get around to them. Luckily his huffing and puffing curtails any conversation even as Robin laughs and teases him, saying he should get up off his arse more instead of lounging around with tea, chocolate biscuits and romance novels.

Finally though they reach her house, Robin jogging down the front steps to unlock the door as he looks around, able to see fields stretching out in the hills behind some of the houses, the odd cow moo-ing. It’s even colder up here and he’s glad to get inside, taking off his boots inside the porch when Robin kicks off her shoes and locks up behind them before she pushes him through to the house itself, shutting another door and flipping the catch on the bolt.

“So, welcome to my house,” she says and it’s possibly the most awkward he’s ever heard her but he can appreciate that. It’s always odd, bringing a stranger into your home. “Want something to eat or drink?”  
  
“I could murder a cup of tea.”  
  
“C’mon.” He follows her through, shutting the doors to keep the heat in as she leads him through the living room and then the dining room before they end up in the kitchen where she puts the kettle on. “Biscuits are in that cupboard.” She points to it and moves over to the phone, nestling it between her ear and shoulder as she bends to grab milk from the fridge. Ambrose isn’t really all that hungry right now but he grabs a Penguin anyway and listens as Robin phones her mum, checking in. He turns slightly to give her privacy but he can’t help but notice the slightly strained tone towards the end of the conversation or the way she shoves the phone back in the cradle when she’s done.

“Bloody woman,” she mutters to herself, barely audible above the boiling kettle.  
  
“Everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah, just her forgetting that I’m a big grown up girl. She’s just annoyed that dad backed me up and said I didn’t need to go with her to see some distant relations this weekend. I get that it’s Christmas,” she gives him a little nudge and he shifts to allow her to grab mugs from the cupboard he’d been leaning against, “but that doesn’t mean you need to go and spend time with people you can’t stand. That’s why we write Christmas cards with stupid letters about how wonderful the year was even if it was a crap year or a year where nothing happened.”  
  
“I think mums are like that,” Ambrose finally replies quietly, thinking about his own family, his birth family. He doesn’t even know if they’re living or dead now and he isn’t quite sure what to think about that.  
  
“I can’t wait till I can afford to live on campus. Get away from all this.” She sighs sharply, shoulders rising and falling and Ambrose gives a half smile and kisses her temple. Robin smiles and ruffles his hair and then sets about sorting out the tea, telling him to go sit on the couch and see if there’s anything decent on TV, something they’ve both been griping about. The holidays are usually the only times when they can both sit around and just watch things for hours on end without having to worry about an early start for work or university but it’s also when television is at its worst and he’s still flipping through the channels when Robin joins him on the couch, tea on the coffee table in front of them.

Eventually they settle on watching Come Dine With Me because Robin loves the sarcastic narrator and he likes the bitchiness of the contestants, Robin leaning on him until her tea is finished when she wriggles around so her feet are on his lap. Which is just asking for trouble and he sees nothing wrong with tickling her, softly at first so that she’s just scowling and moving her feet away until he grabs her legs, fingers moving relentlessly until she’s gasping and giggling and struggling to push herself up. When she manages it though, she ends up in his lap, lips pressed to his, fingers in his hair and he steadies her, trying to ignore the little annoying voice in the back of his head that keeps saying: _you are sitting in her parents’ house with their daughter in your lap, with less than noble intentions in mind._

Robin is the one to break the kiss because it’s how things always go with them and it’s what he likes, more than likes if he’s honest, fumbling for the remote to switch the telly off as she gets to her feet. She doesn’t say anything as she takes his hand and leads him upstairs to her room and he just about remembers to kick the door shut (not because he needs to really but it’s the principle of the thing) as she directs him to the bed and he goes willingly when she pushes him to lie down. His hands find her back beneath her t-shirt, skin soft and warm and he thinks he could probably kiss her forever and be happy but she has other ideas, tugging at his t-shirt and jumper until he raises his arms and lifts himself up to help. She trails her fingers down his chest, over his ribs which makes him suck in a breath and laugh because he’s ticklish there.

It isn’t as though they’ve never had sex before but at his flat things always seem rushed and frantic. Here, in her room, in this still and quiet house, she’s taking her time, tracing over the few scars he’s managed to pick up in his life before she gets to his belt buckle which she manages with no difficulties. And from then it’s just the simple matter of him raising his hips once he’s toed off his socks before he’s lying on top of her duvet, naked while she’s still fully clothed, kneeling above him, her tights rubbing against his thighs.

“This hardly seems fair,” he manages to say and she favours him with another smirk before she pulls her top and t-shirt up and over her head, dropping them to the floor and once that is dealt with she moves his hands to her backside and the zip of her skirt which he undoes slowly, helping to slide it down. She shifts then, sitting perched at the end of the bed as she rolls down her tights, getting up to lay them over her chair, underwear following after a moment of hesitation. She joins him on the bed again then, laying herself out flush against him and he groans.  
  
“Fair now?”  
  
“Definitely.”  
  
“Good.” She shifts position again, leaning above him and he arches up, mouthing her breast and she lets out a surprised gasp, freezing until she seems to remember what it was that she was doing in the first place.

One of her hands travels down to his cock, touching lightly at first until he gives a definite thrust up and she grips her firmly, jerking him off slowly until she lets go of him (smiling and planting a brief kiss on his shoulder when he makes a protesting noise) to grab something that turns out to be a condom. He’s actually surprised things are moving so quickly but it’s still early evening and he bears that in mind as she rolls the condom down, his hands moving to hold her hips once hers are braced on his chest as she lowers herself onto him slowly.

They’ve got the whole night and a house to themselves. He’s glad he came home with her this weekend.

\---

Christmas passes with very little incident up until the full moon. The weather is especially bad after unexpectedly heavy snowfall day after day and it lingers as the temperature drops. He has to spend his nights out in that and even as a wolf it’s still bitterly cold and he loses almost all of his body fat. Then he gets sick in a way he’s never been before, deep racking coughs that make his head pound, alternate fever and chills as he sweats and shivers miserably, wanting nothing more than to claw his skin off. He only gets up when he needs to and the shopkeeper in his local newsagent urges him to go to the doctor or to the hospital but he says no. He’s injured this time too but thankfully the wounds aren’t infected; he ran all night and ended up in the woods not far from Robin’s where another pack of wolves roam. A family pack. The alpha took exception to him skulking around but the damage could have been first; winter tends to bring out the more vicious side in his kind.

What puzzles him is why he roamed so many miles, running and running although the running had been to keep him warm, to keep him far away from people because he didn’t trust himself. Animal instincts are stronger than he’d like to admit when he’s in his shirt and ties and pretending to be normal at work and around Robin but when his body is in survival mode, anything becomes a potential target. If he ever attacked a human he’s sure he’d throw himself off the Erskine Bridge without a moment of hesitation. That still brings him back to Robin and why he went to the woods above the back of her house. Robin has no idea what he is but it comforts him to be close to her.

The doorbell ringing startles him from his thoughts and he shuffles to the door, yawning and hoping that it’s nothing important because he could use a shower but he’s too tired to bother taking one.

“Hello?” He croaks out, hand on the lock.  
  
“Ambrose? It’s Robin.”  
  
Shit. He frowns and looks around the flat, the whole place a tip. But Robin always complains about the mess so maybe he can blame being sick for the way it looks so much worse than normal so he opens the door, trying for a smile. “Happy New Year.”  
  
“Doesn’t look like it’s been very happy for you,” Robin replies with a frown, shutting the door behind her. “What’s wrong with you?”  
  
“No idea, maybe a flu or a virus or something.”  
  
“You look like death all heated up.”  
  
“Thanks.” He starts to laugh but chokes and then is bent double, hacking and choking as Robin rubs at his back, making him sit down. “Sorry,” he says after several minutes and she rolls her eyes, making her way into the kitchen and Ambrose hears the tap running and cupboard doors being open and closed.  
  
“Ambrose! Where d’you keep your medicine?” Robin calls out.  
  
“See that really big cupboard?”  
  
“Yeah!”  
  
“It’s on a shelf in there.”  
  
“Got it.”

And then there’s an unholy clatter and he’s on his feet to see what’s wrong only to find Robin standing there, his wolf skin clutched in her hands as the medicine box lies on the floor.

“Ambrose?” She’s white as a sheet, eyes huge like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He can’t get his mouth to work, words dying in his throat until she looks between him and the skin clenched tight in her fingers. “Oh holy fucking Jesus, you’re a fucking wolf,” she gets out before she’s pitching backwards, catching her head on the edge of the kitchen counter before Ambrose manages to grab her. His fingers automatically check the back of her head, finding no blood. He sinks down next to her, prying the wolf skin from her grip. It’s that action that has her stirring and rubbing at her head, grumbling as she takes a moment to come back to herself.

“Bloody hell,” she hisses and he guesses that she must have touched the area she hit but then her eyes are narrowing as she takes in him and the skin, getting to her feet. “You’re a wolf.”  
  
There’s no point in denying it so he gets up too, sitting at his kitchen table with the wolf skin draped across his lap. “I am.” And then he’s looking at her because her reaction wasn’t normal. She didn’t take it calmly but she called him a wolf. “How the hell do you know what the skin means?”  
  
“Because I...” she bites her bottom lip, eyes falling shut, “I’m a Red Hood Ambrose.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m a Red Hood.”

Ambrose’s stomach sinks. A Red Hood. It would be funny if the consequences weren’t so dire for him. Red Hoods kill wolves. God she could kill him right now and get it over with; other Red Hoods would help her out and allow her to get away with it. Or she’d stalk him or have others capture him and keep him locked up again until he turned and he was then exterminated like an animal.

The scrape of the chair has him jumping as Robin takes a seat across from him, hunched forward over the table with her head in her hands.

“Christ. Why did you have to be a wolf?” She asks, sighing shakily and he wants to grab her hands and tell her that it’s going to be alright but it’s not.  
  
“Why did you have to be a Red Hood?” He counters and she makes a strange noise that could be a startled laugh. Neither of them say a thing until Robin goes over to the sink to pour him a glass of water that he accepts gratefully.  
  
“It’s not like I had a choice,” she says very carefully, tapping her finger on the table. “My family, well mum’s side...they’re all Red Hoods. We’ve always been that way. I can’t just turn around and say that I’m not going to do what’s expected of me, not while I’m living under that roof.”  
  
“I didn’t have a choice either,” Ambrose replies, sipping at his water. “But it’s a hell of a lot harder for me to not be a wolf than it is for you to not be a Red Hood.”  
  
“What do I do now?” Robin looks at him, eyes wide and pained and it’s a knife through him, twisting and driving deep.  
  
“Kill me.”

He doesn’t know why he says it but it makes the air change, this ugly truth sitting between them and Robin pushes back from the table so violently that her chair goes clattering to the floor, hands slamming down on the table.

“Is this supposed to be funny?” She snaps. “I’m not just a killer!” she takes a steadying breath, picking up the chair. She rubs her head afterwards, looking like she’s got the beginning of a headache coming on and he can’t blame he. “Besides, you’re not a wolf. Not now. You’re a person.”  
  
“I’m still a person when I’m a wolf,” he points out even though he’s on thin ice.  
  
“I know that!” Robin drops into back into her seat, defeat rolling off her in waves. “Don’t think I don’t know that. I know every time that I’m shooting a mother, a father, a son or a daughter or any other type of loved one. But it’s what I do. But you...fuck I’m as bad as you aren’t I? Pretending that I’m something that I’m not.”  
  
Ambrose can’t help himself and he snorts. “So what happens now?”  
  
“I thought I asked you that.”  
  
“No, you asked what you should do. I’m asking what happens here.”  
  
“It’s up to you. I...I don’t think I could kill you now. I’ve never met a wolf in person until you, not without knowing what they were all the while. I always thought...” she trails off with a shake of the head.  
  
“You always thought what?”  
  
“I always thought I would just know. Everyone says that, you know, ‘I could spot a wolf at twenty paces any day’ but I didn’t even suspect. I just believed the stories I’d been brought up with, all my training that said you were evil.”  
  
“If it makes you feel any better,” he downs the last of the water, “I was brought up the same way. I thought there would be some instinct that told me to turn tail and run or to attack or to do _something_ to save myself. The wolf instincts...they go deep. All the way through.”

Robin smiles sadly and cautiously extends a hand to clasp his hand, scooting her chair closer until her knees bump his.

“You can’t let this define you. I always wanted to be so much more than this. And you’re not some animal.” Her forehead is resting against his, skin blessedly cool and he’s missed her, God, he’s missed her while he was festering away here all on his own. Even if she says that he’s more than this – and it feels so good to hear someone say those words aloud – he thinks that it part of him drove him to where she patrols. But for now he’s exhausted, cold sweat making his hair stick to his head.

“Do you want to stay?” He asks, sounding faintly desperate.  
  
“As long as you promise not to throw up on me.”  
  
“I promise.”

She pulls him to his feet, an arm around him for support as he stumbles along to the bedroom. As soon as he hits the mattress he’s already drifting off as Robin strokes her fingers through his hair before travelling down his neck. He’s on his front, muscles relaxing one by one as she walks her fingers down over his spine to the still raised bites from the alpha.

“Christ,” she breathes, running careful fingers around the afflicted area, “what happened to you?”  
  
“There’s an alpha up your way,” he mumbles into his pillow, unwilling to lift his head. “I had a run in with him.”  
  
“Shit, he’s a nasty bugger,” Robin breathes and he wonders how many times she’s encountered him. “Never attacked me personally but he savaged one of the local farmers. Poor man had a heart attack and died after he went out with his shotgun thinking it was a fox or a dog that had savaged some of his sheep.”  
  
“This was a warning,” Ambrose says softly. “You always want to join a pack again or start your own.”  
  
Robin makes an agreeing noise and he wonders just what she knows, what matches and what doesn’t, what has been fabricated or twisted into something unrecognisable to his reality. “You said you were up my way. It’s a hell of a way on foot.”  
  
“As soon as I turned I ran. I kept running and running and running,” and he can remember it, the aching joints, panting despite the temperatures being a long way below zero, “and then I was in the woods behind your house.”  
  
“I never saw you at all, not all the times I was out.”  
  
“I never saw you either. I didn’t see anyone so I thought it was safe.”  
  
“I live there. My mum and aunt live there. I’ve got a cousin about ten minutes away.” She moves her hand away from his bite wound at last and rests it between his shoulders, lying stretched out on her side next to him. “You never said why you were there.”  
  
“I don’t know why. I just ended up there.”

Robin lets the subject go and he drifts off without realising it, sleeping deeply and Robin is still there when he wakes up, his skin in her lap.

“How long was I out?” It must be a long time because it seems far darker in his room, long shadows being cast and his throat is scratchy.  
  
“Good few hours. Phoned my parents so they know I’m staying the night.”  
  
“You’re staying?” Something flutters in his chest, hope and relief and other things he can’t address right now.  
  
“I’m staying,” she says. “I had plenty of time to think and right now, I’m staying here. With you.”

He can read between the lines and knows not to say more right now, not to test this before they’ve laid out any boundaries they might need to mark. She’ll be the one who’ll have to shoulder more than him, living in a house where she’s expected to fulfil a duty as she carries his secret with her. He wants to say that he’s being unfair to her but before he can say anything she’s talking again.

“It’s so strange to see a skin on its own. It’s like the selkie myths; when you peel it off, you’re human. But you always keep it close to you.”  
  
“I don’t know much about selkies. I’m not the one who likes folklore.”  
  
“In the selkie myths, men used to hide the skins of the selkies so they’d never be able to escape into the sea again.”  
  
“Would you do that to me?” His tone is light and he’s proud but it’s a loaded question and they both know it.  
  
“I can’t make your choices for you. Your life is your life and even if you asked me to take away a choice, I wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that.”  
  
“I don’t know if I could ever decide one way or the other.”

She smiles sadly and rests her head on his shoulder as he searches for her hand, fingers entwined.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” He asks and she squeezes his hand, knees drawing up to her chest and he has never seen her like this, so unsure and resigned to things. Robin looks like a girl who could hold out her hand and have the world sit in it quite happily – life in general always looked as though it came so easily to her but he wonders now if those days she was quiet or withdrawn were days when a gunshot had echoed through the woods, blood splattering to the ground.  
  
“Yes. To wear the hood you have to kill and bring home the skin.”  
  
He swallows and manages not to wince, leaning across to tuck her hair behind her ear so he can see her face. “So it’s what, proof? A trophy?”  
  
“We burn it. To erase the last hints of the wolf.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You don’t know?” She looks at him aghast and he shakes his head slowly. “When you kill a wolf when it looks like a wolf, they turn into a human again, just wearing the skin about them like a cape.” Robin shudders and drops her head. “Fuck Ambrose...don’t ever get caught.”

He can’t promise that he won’t; that’s not for him to decide but he’ll do his utmost. He regards the skin, the rows of sharp teeth and it almost seems to be a living breathing thing and he swears that his skin pricks when he runs his fingers over the coarse pelt. It’s as he does this, his hand in hers, that one last question runs through his head; if the skin of a living wolf were to be set alight, what would become of them?

But for now he lets Robin lie him down, pulling his head to her chest where she holds his head in her hands. This is what he was searching for when he ran all those miles in bitter snow looking for her, this belonging and trust and an undercurrent of something deeper.

His questions can wait till morning when they map out their new and uncharted territory.


End file.
